It’s human nature: Elections and disinformation go hand-in-hand. We idealize the competition of ideas and the process of debate while we listen to the whisper campaigns telling us of the skeletons in the other candidate’s closet. Or, we can learn from serious journalism to tap into the growing number of digital tools at hand and see what is really going on in this fall’s campaigns. Join journalist Tom Johnson for a three-part workshop at Santa Fe Complex to learn how you can be your own investigative reporter and get ready for that special Tuesday in November.

Over the course of three Tuesdays, beginning September 30, Johnson will show workshop participants how to do the online research needed to understand what’s happening in the fall political campaign. There will be homework assignments and participants will contribute to the Three Tuesdays wiki so their discoveries will be available to the general public.

Everyone is welcome but space will be limited. A suggested donation of $45 covers all three events or $20 will help produce each session. Click here to sign up.

The Daily Tip Sheet (September 30, 6:30 pm)

Newspapers are a ‘morning line’ tip sheet. There isn’t enough room for what you need to know.

Newspapers can be a good jumping-off point for political knowledge, but they rarely have enough staff, staff time and space to really drill down into a topic. Ergo, it is increasingly up to citizens to do the research to preserve democracy and help inform voters. Tonight we will be introduced to some of the city, state and national web sites to help in our reporting and to a few digital tools to help you save and retrieve what you find.

Swimming Against the Flow (October 7, 6:30 pm):

How to track data to their upstream sources.

A web page and its data are not static events. (Well, usually they are not.) Web pages and digital data all carry “signs” of where they came from, who owns the site(s) and sometimes who links to the sites. We will discuss how investigators can use these attributes to our advantage, and also take a step back to consider the “architecture of sophisticated web searching.”

The Payoff (October 14, 6:30 pm)

Yup, it IS about following the money. But then what?

Every election season, new web sites come along that make it easier to follow the money — election money. This final workshop looks at some of those sites and focuses on how to get their data into a spreadsheet. Then what? A short intro to slicing-and-dicing the numbers. (Even if you are a spreadsheet maven, please come and act as a coach.)

This workshop is NOT a sit-and-take-it-in event. We’re looking for folks who want to do some beginning hands-on (”On-line hands-on”, that is) investigation of New Mexico politics. And that means homework assignments and contributing to our Three Tuesdays wiki. Participants are also encouraged to bring a laptop if you can. Click here to sign up.

Tom Johnson’s 30-year career path in journalism is one that regularly moved from the classroom to the newsroom and back. He worked for TIME magazine in El Salvador in the mid-80s, was the founding editor of MacWEEK, and a deputy editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His areas of interest are analytic journalism, dynamic simulation models of publishing systems, complexity theory, the application of Geographic Information Systems in journalism and the impact of the digital revolution on journalism and journalism education. He is the founder and co-director of the Institute for Analytic Journalism and a member of the Advisory Board of Santa Fe Complex.